Happy Tuesday! It’s time again for another edition of Teaser Tuesdays…

Here are the rules:

• Grab your current read
• Let the book fall open to a random page
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• You also need to share the title of the book where you get your teaser from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given
• Please avoid spoilers

This week’s teaser:

"I’d had enough. We’d eaten crabs (I hate seafood), gone up in the Trade Center (I hate heights), and visited the National Aquarium (did I mention I hate seafood?)–all because Zachary kept playing the birthday card." pg. pg. 190 Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready

I’m a few chapters into the story and while I admit it took those few chapters for me to warm up to it, I must say I’m intrigued.

The world that’s being painted, where anyone born after a certain date can see spirits and in turn help them, has my eyebrow perked up and Zachary? Have I mentioned that I love accents? He happens to have a Scottish one.

It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words…

(Apologies for the super-craptasical camera phone picture quality.)

Rundown of the books are: Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose; The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt; Goody Hall by Natalie Babbitt; The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan; Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen; White Cat by Holly Black; Ash by Malinda Lo; Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater; The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons; A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliot; The Metamorphoses by Ovid (which is concealed); Bite Me by Christopher Moore; The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow; and The Hollow by Jessica Verday.

And probably not surprisingly, I also have a stack of books on the floor near my bed, but I’ll spare you. As for having books in other places in the house, um…of course. An easier question would be, where don’t I have books?

Right now my reading is rotating between three books. Having finished The Unwritten Rule on Sunday and slated to complete Dork Diaries (Book 2) today, I will be working Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready into the mix with Stolen by Lucy Christopher and Rumor Has It by Jill Mansell. (I’m a mood-based reader, hence the seemingly random book pool.)

Happy Tuesday! It’s time again for another edition of Teaser Tuesdays…

Here are the rules:

• Grab your current read
• Let the book fall open to a random page
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• You also need to share the title of the book where you get your teaser from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given
• Please avoid spoilers

This week’s teaser:

"And then, when his mother got cancer for the second time, though Charlie knew about the chemo and the radiation and the lymph nodes, it was months before anyone acknowledged how serious it was. She was dying by the time Charlie’s sister called and urged him home." pg. 53 Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline

This is one of those books that’s been sitting on my TBR stack for ages that I’ve been meaning to read for just as long and always shove aside for one reason or another, but now I’m focused on finishing it.

I’m about halfway through now and I’m wondering why I waited so long. It’s the story of four people struggling through their individual and coupled lives in the wake of a tragedy.

I love character studies (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before)–just stick a bunch of interesting people in a pressure cooker together and see what happens–and this book is shaping up to be an interesting one. Infidelity and a car accident in which a young boy dies. That’s what I call a pressure cooker if ever there was one.

Recent Arrivals chronicles the books that have made their way onto the Today, I Read… bookshelf. Here’s the latest arrival: Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not-So Popular Party Girl by Rachel Renee Russell

First line: I can’t believe this is happening to me!

Initial thoughts:

*SQUEE* happy dance.

I read the first Dork Diaries installment and loved it. It reminded me of what is was like to be young and in school and how every little thing that went wrong was the absolute end of the world and how awkward it felt to talk to the boy all the girls wanted to be with and just how traumatizing in general middle school could be.

So when I saw the package from Simon & Schuster waiting for me, I did a little happy dance.

It even came in a cute wrapping with a Ring Pop. A RING POP! (I haven’t had one of those since I was in school.)

I can’t wait to dig into this book and I’m hoping it will be just as much fun as the first one.

Book description:

In this second installment of the Dork Diaries series, Nikki is starting to adjust to life at her new school with her awesome friends Chloe and Zoey at her side. Her crush, Brandon, even asks her to be his lab partner for "Structure of Mitochondria," a seriously awesome development.

But after Nikki overhears mean girl MacKenzie bragging that Brandon’s going to take her to the Halloween dance and they’re dressing as Edward and Bella, a bummed Nikki signs on to spend Halloween at a kids’ party for her little sister, Brianna. It’s only after Nikki makes the commitment that she finds out MacKenzie was lying and Nikki’s dream of going to the party with Brandon could be a reality. Now she’s got two parties to juggle, plus plenty of other trials and tribulations along the way, ranging from creating a fairy repellent spray to ease Brianna’s ongoing fear of the tooth fairy and trying to stifle a nasty case of the hiccups at her dad’s ex-boss’s funeral. Life for Nikki Maxwell is never dull!

Book Details: 288 pages; Aladdin; Pub. June 8, 2010

Since I needed to take a week off reading, I’ve fallen behind on my reading schedule. I did manage to wake up this morning and read The Unwritten Rule by Elizabeth Scott.

It’s a relatively quick read and a touching story, if a bit angst-y for my tastes. Sarah has a crush on Ryan. Problem is, Ryan is dating Brianna, Sarah’s best friend. But eventually Sarah learns that Ryan has feelings for her too. What ensues is a lot of self-doubt, guilt, and general emotional messiness.

As the story progressed, I found myself realizing that Brianna was the true star of the book although it was narrated by Sarah and essentially was about the relationship between Sarah and Ryan. I hope to have the full review written and posted inside this week.

Books next in the TBR queue include:

Stolen by Lucy Christopher: Yes, I’m still trying to slog my way through that one. From everything I’ve heard, there is a pay-off…it’s just a matter of making it that far. Right now, I’m up to page 89 (just shy of the halfway mark) and the pace is still rather slow, but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it picks up soon.

Rumor Has It by Jill Mansell: While this book is also a slower read, I find that the pacing is appropriate for the unfolding story (or, rather, stories). I’m about halfway through and it’s just starting to pick up, but the Anglicisms are still throwing me for a loop.

Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready, Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson, The Deadly Sister by Eliot Schrefer, and Silent Scream by Karen Rose.

The rest of this very clear and sunny day will be spent catching up on housework and if there’s time, curling up with a good book and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. (Wish me luck because I’m really looking forward to that ice cream.)